BC and discovered in 1896 in Thebes, contains the earliest
mention of Israel as a nation and not as wandering tribes.
Thus, Israel must have been firmly established long before
1211, placing the Exodus no later than about 1270
BC,
contra the late date theory.
23 Steinmann summarized how
archaeological evidence from the destruction of Jericho and
Ai do not support the late date theory either. If conservative
archaeologist Bryant Wood’s analysis of Canaanite pottery
the ruins at Khirbet el-Maqatir correctly identify as Ai,
then it was destroyed circa 1400
BC—40 years of desert
wandering after the 1446
BC Exodus.
24 The only other city
that Joshua burned and destroyed instead of just taking
over was Hazor, and excavations of its relevant destruction
layer also show a match with a 1446
BC Exodus.

Cross-check with an independent Rabbinic reckoning

Wouldn’t it be nice for a separate system of counting to
confirm this chronology? Steinmann summarized Young’s
description of how Jewish Jubilee years do this. The
Mosaic Law provided Sabbatical years—every seventh—
to rest the land. Every seventh Sabbatical year coincided
with a Year of Jubilee according to Leviticus 25: 8. The
50th year of Jubilee also counts as the first year of the
next cycle, bringing 49 years total for each Jubilee cycle.
Although many Hebrews did not faithfully observe the
Sabbatical or Jubilee years, scribal records preserve them.
In about ad 160, Rabbi Yose ben Halafta included key
Jubilee counts in the Seder ‘Olam Rabbah.
25 The Talmud
carries this information forward for modern readers.
These documents teach that the Jubilee from Ezekiel
40: 1 was the seventeenth Jubilee. Ezekiel 40: 1 says: “In
the twenty-fifth year of our captivity, at the beginning of
the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth
year after the city was captured, on the very same day the
hand of the Lord was upon me; and He took me there.” It
names a year that began on the tenth day of the month,
which could only be a Jubilee year. The first Jubilee
began, according to Leviticus 45: 2, on the 49th year after
Joshua and Israel entered the promised land. Steinmann,
26
following Young,
27 counts backward from 574
BC (actually
574 beginning in the month Tishri, not January), a year
that occurred in the 25th year of the captivity according to
Ezekiel 40: 1 and 14 years after the final fall of Jerusalem
in 587
BC. Adding 17 Jubilee cycles of 49 to 574, plus 48
years between entering the land and the first Jubilee, plus

40 years of wilderness = 1446
BC.

A Masoretic text-based bc date for the Flood

Additional considerations will be required to update mini-mum-maximum age ranges. For example, can the apparentcontradiction between the 400 years of Genesis 15: 13 andthe 430 years given in Exodus 12: 40–41 be resolved? CarefulBible reading presents a satisfying solution. The former(400) gives the number of years that “they will afflict them”,and the latter (430) gives the total number of years of “thesojourn”. In other words, the Israelites were not afflicted fortheir first 30 years of their sojourn in Egypt. One can easilyimagine an abrupt change in pharaonic dynasties affectingprevailing attitudes toward the Hebrews during Joseph’slater years. These two numbers therefore don’t conflict,but instead allow cross-checks, as do other Bible numbers.

Bible numbers (for example those found in Genesis 21: 5;
Genesis 25: 26; Genesis 47: 28; Exodus 7: 7; Deuteronomy 34: 7;
1 Kings 6: 1; Joshua 4: 19; Acts 13: 21; and 2 Samuel 5: 4) accumulate 1,234 years between the birth of Abram and the death
of Solomon. Adding 1,234 to the death of Solomon in 932
BC sets Abram’s birth to 2166
BC according to Steinmann’s
timeline.
28 With the Flood-to-Abram Genesis 11 chronogenealogy having no name gaps and more importantly no
time gaps, the timespan between the Flood and Abram’s
birth should equal very nearly 352 years. This follows by
adding 292 years from Genesis 11 to 60 presumed years
between Terah’s firstborn and Abram, as discussed above.
352 years before 2166
BC marks 2518
BC for Noah’s Flood.
Adding a generous 14 years for unknown gestation and
paternal age months from Arphaxad to Abram gives 2532
BC for the Flood, using the Masoretic text.

How do these compare to some other calculations? First,
these fall inside Hardy and Carter’s range of 2600
BC to
2300
BC.
5 About a century ago, Basil Stewart calculated a
Flood date of 2344
BC.
29 He did not have the solution to the
kings reigns that recent chronologists have deduced and
which Steinmann summarized in 2011. Also his siege of
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 585
BC should update to
587
BC as argued above, to anchor
BC age estimates to biblical
chronology. As another comparison to an even earlier
chronologist who also had a high regard for Scripture’s
precision, Peter Akers supplied 3284
BC for the Flood.
30
He “constituted a fixed point on Egyptian chronology”
31 to
find his much older date. Since then, enough problems have
arisen with especially the older Egyptian chronologies to
demonstrate their insufficiency as chronological anchors for
biblical numbers.
32 Indeed some admit Egyptian chronology
is a tattered collection not at all deserving the solid
historical clout it enjoyed when Akers was writing.
33 Thus,
2518–2532
BC should represent a tight and yet responsible
date range for the Flood using the Masoretic text. Finally,
Archbishop Ussher derived a Flood date without the
results of key archaeological finds, including Assyrian
king records and Hazor’s excavation, and without decision
table resolutions for the divided kingdom chronologies
that permit precise synchronizations with surely dated
extrabiblical events, although he had access to historical